


Interlude (Quarantine)

by leiascully



Series: The FBI's Most Unwanted [37]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Isolation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Quarantine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-24 21:14:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4935583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow their nice trips to the forest always ended in quarantine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude (Quarantine)

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: post 2.09 "Firewalker"  
> A/N: Because Mulder says they spent a month in quarantine and that was too good to resist.  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

Somehow their nice trips to the forest always ended in quarantine. In a way, Scully was grateful for the month of isolation that followed their excursion to Mount Avalon. First and foremost, she was afraid the glass hadn't been enough to protect her from the spores of the fungus, the way they wafted on the currents of the air. There had been a crack in the door, however she'd tried to wedge it over the chain that attached her to O'Neil. She would not return to the workday world carrying a weapon inside her body. 

Second, and secret, she was still having nightmares about bright white rooms. Or not nightmares, precisely, but dreams that left her with a strange disconnected feeling. It was better when the dreams weren't specific. Twice since she'd been discharged from the hospital, she'd woken clutching her face, and once clutching her belly.

Mulder, the insomniac, knocked on her door the second night of their quarantine.

"You all right, Scully?" he asked, his voice muffled by the panel.

"I'm fine," she called back.

"It sounded like you were having a rough night," he said. 

She stayed quiet a moment. "Was I loud?"

"You sounded a little upset," he said. "Want to play cards?"

The quarantine bay was furnished like an apartment for a long stay: a couple of bedrooms, a kitchenette where they could make tea, a deck of cards and a chessboard and the books left behind by previous occupants, presumably decontaminated. Scully wrapped herself in the blanket from her bed. They didn't have their own clothes, and the institutional pajamas weren't as warm as the silk ones she wore at home. They played Go Fish and rummy for an hour and a half, until they were both yawning. She slept after that, soundly enough that Mulder didn't come back, but they stayed up together the next night, pretending they were just distracted. 

Quarantine would have been unbearable with anyone except Mulder. He didn't ask questions. He knew, as well as anyone could, where she'd been and what she'd been through. There were nights she shivered and he sat on the end of her bed and told her stories about sunlit afternoons on the Cape or anecdotes from his Academy days. She was grateful for that. Under the sheet, she pushed her toes against the warm solidity of his thigh and he pretended not to notice, but he dropped his hand to the blanket to cup the tops of her feet.

They talked and they bickered and they speculated. They read and they wrote and they drank endless cups of mediocre tea and ate regulation food off regulation plates. They submitted to medical tests, had their mouths swabbed, had their vitals taken. The medical procedures comforted her. There was a certainty in them. She was on familiar ground. Every day she felt a little readier to face the outside world again. Every night Mulder talked to her, her own ersatz Scheherezade.

The days ticked past and Mulder drew tally marks with his fingers in the fog on the bathroom mirror. She called her mother or Melissa every few days. Mulder called each of his parents once. Thirty days of tests and observations, thirty days of every card game they could remember the rules to. At last the white-coated scientists and the stern-faced military personnel told them they were cleared to leave. Mulder held her coat for her - her own coat, processed and more thoroughly clean than it had been when she bought it - and together they stepped out into the weak December sunlight. She felt fine. Mulder hovered behind her, and she turned to him and smiled. 

"What's your first act as a free G-woman?" he asked.

"I want real coffee," she said.

He grinned. "Those are correct priorities, Scully."

"Come on," she said. "My treat."

"A month later and you're still not sick of me?" he teased.

"Ask me tomorrow," she said, thinking of how strange it would be to spend the night alone in her apartment, Mulder a phone call away instead of a whimper. 

"I will," he said, and they drove away.


End file.
